Privacy and predators

There are very few of us who have not heard about "sexual predators," people who victimize children and do so with wretched regularity. So why in the world would a particular kind of healthcare agency, devoted to doing what is best for their clients, refuse to cooperate with law enforcement officials who are attempting to track down and penalize these deplorable deviants?

As you attempt to answer that question, let me give you your first clue: the "health care agencies" at issue are abortion facilities. These are places where the practice of killing innocent preborn children is always done with impunity; and in fact, the law protects the tradesmen. And it doesn't matter whether the client is 12 or 22 years of age. The practitioners hide behind the screen of "privacy" and go about their business, never concerned about cause or effect. "After all," you can almost hear them say, "a buck is a buck."

But in Kansas red flags are flying at the offices of the state's attorney general, Phill Kline. A great deal of investigation has been carried out, and until a year ago, things were going along so well that Kline believed he was about to close in on perpetrators who had criminally assaulted their victims, rendering some of them pregnant. But the fly in the ointment has been the refusal of abortion offices to turn over the medical records needed to either confirm or deny Kline's suspicions.

Kline has been rather forthcoming with the brutal reality he believes lies lurking in those yet unread files. He knows that at least 75 girls under the age of 14 have abortions annually in his state. And it is his official position that in such cases each of these young ladies under the age of legal consent has been raped. Therefore, he has a moral and legal obligation to pursue the sexual offenders and carry out a full investigation of their crimes. Kline makes no apologies to anyone; he is striving to protect children and to apprehend those who would violate such young women regardless of their excuse for doing so.

Abortion clinic personnel, on the other hand, maintain that these female children have a "right to privacy." Abortionists dispute Kline's motives and claim he is making a "dangerous argument." They claim there is no way anyone can prove that abortion clinics are safe havens for such predators. But since these same staff refuse to cooperate with a perfectly reasonable effort to track down the alleged criminals, how is anyone to know precisely what these abortion clinics are battling to conceal from the law.

Several years ago Life Dynamics, Inc., a pro-life activist organization, conducted a two-year investigation of Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation facilities where abortions are actually carried out. The phone calls made to each of these locations were taped and the evidence is rather overwhelming, if not downright spine chilling.

In each case the Life Dynamics caller portrayed herself as a 13-year-old girl who was pregnant by a 22-year-old man. She would go on to discuss her desire to obtain an abortion so that she could hide her relationship from her parents and the authorities. "While many clinic workers can be heard on the tapes telling the caller that this situation was unlawful and that they were legally mandated to report it to the state, 91 percent of these facilities still agreed to illegally conceal it, reports Life Dynamics.

It was Life Dynamics' investigation that first revealed the ugly fact that in many states, including Kansas, the operators of abortion facilities publicly state that they have no intention of complying with the mandatory reporting laws. Well, if abortion profiteers have no intention of complying with state law, why should anyone be surprised that they refuse to turn over records when subpoenas are issued demanding that they be provided as part of an ongoing criminal investigation? The attorney general is not asking for all the records; there are 90 specific records in which he has an interest, and those records are part of the overall files in two different abortion clinics.

Kline writes, "only abortion clinics hold themselves out as above the law and make the extraordinary argument that the constitution protects the privacy of the rapist." Kline accuses abortion mills of being hypocritical about keeping their records private when it can be shown that such clinics have used the patient records for fundraising purposes. Not only that, but since some abortion clinics of late have been observed using the services of shredding companies, it is with good cause that Kline expresses concern about the actual motives of those who have thus far resisted his plea for cooperation in the protection of the state's minor children.

Perhaps it is Nancy Keenan who best speaks for the true interests of abortion industry spokespeople. Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said, "Kline's record reflects his belief that government should have control over personal decisions, and he's willing to use the subpoena process to rifle through medical records."

Some would find such a statement frivolous and irresponsible, but Keenan is dead serious. Any attempt to expose the gruesome facts about abortion - even when the effort is aimed at finding and penalizing sexual predators who have chosen young girls as their victims - always sends abortion devotees scurrying to find some legal loophole that will protect their right to continue the killing, continue collecting the money and continue poisoning the minds of expectant mothers with the fabricated tale that abortion is a privilege and privacy is their birthright.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline has been maligned, misquoted, harassed and even bludgeoned with the language of choice-speak. But he is not faint of heart; he is a man who respects what the law can do to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. As he once wrote in an editorial, "This investigation is targeted, involving only 90 records out of some 12,000 abortions, and are only the records maintained by the clinics - not extensive family medical histories? I have a duty to protect children, and enforce the law - false media speculation and rhetoric of abortion clinics, notwithstanding."

The Kansas attorney general's struggle rages on; it is not likely to disappear any time soon unless the abortion trade finally agrees that protecting children is indeed more important than preserving the mystique that sets surgical abortion and its minions above the laws that protect the rest of us.

Sexual predators are animals that need to be identified, arrested, tried, convicted and punished for the harm they have done to our children. Likewise, I have always held that in a just society abortionists and those who sell the grisly procedure should be arrested, tried, convicted and punished for the deadly harm they have inflicted on innocent babies.

Perhaps the culture of death has taken such a stranglehold on our national conscience that the liberation of sexual predators was sure to follow the legal protection of those who kill preborn babies. Time will tell. For now, at least, our hats are off to Phill Kline; may his efforts be the first victorious steps taken in the struggle to restore moral sanity to the nation.